GEOFF BENNETT: Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch announced today that he is stepping down as the institution he leads faces an escalating battle with the Trump administration over how it tells the American story.

Bunch, the first African American to lead the Smithsonian, plans to retire at the end of the year, capping a career that transformed the institution.

He was the founding director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which marks its 10th anniversary this month.

I spoke with Bunch last week, before he announced his retirement, about the political pressure, what's at stake for the Smithsonian, and how he sees his legacy.

It's part of our series Art in Action, exploring the intersection of art and democracy, part of our Canvas coverage.

LONNIE BUNCH, Smithsonian Institution Secretary: I had hoped that this museum, as part of the Smithsonian, would be important to America.

It's become even more important than I could ever imagine.

GEOFF BENNETT: The National Museum of African American History and Culture was Lonnie Bunch's great undertaking, an institution he spent more than a decade bringing to life.

When it opened on the National Mall in 2016, the museum offered something unprecedented, bringing together the sweep of Black history and culture and its central place in the American story.

LONNIE BUNCH: When I think about the 10 years and I walk through the building now, I'm almost so proud to be an American, that this is something you could build in America, that you could ask these difficult questions.

GEOFF BENNETT: When we spoke a decade ago, upon the opening, you described this museum as a kind of a reservoir, a place where people can find understanding and resilience and laughter and hope.

Ten years in, has it become what you hoped it would be?

LONNIE BUNCH: Even more so, because, in a way, I see people who are really using it as that reservoir.

I watch people come in here and they sort of learn new stories.

I watch people understand that slavery is something that's not just a story for African Americans, but a kind of quintessential American story.

And I find people around the country saying to me, I came to the museum and I was made better.

And that really just makes me feel so good about what the Smithsonian can do.

GEOFF BENNETT: Building the museum also meant finding the artifacts that could tell those stories, sometimes by going straight to the source.

How did you acquire this Cadillac?

LONNIE BUNCH: I called Chuck Berry and said, "I want..." GEOFF BENNETT: You called up Chuck Berry?

LONNIE BUNCH: Yes.

"I want one of the guitars that you wrote "Maybellene" on.

And he said: "OK, but if you want a guitar, you got to take my car."

And I was like: "I don't care about a car, and I didn't want it.

And so I was like, fine."

And -- but we have gifted staff who basically knew that this was so important to Chuck Berry to sort of middle-class respectability, all of that.

And so they collected it and convinced me that it should be on display.

And I remember thinking, this is not the story I want to tell.

It's become the number one photographed item in our museum.

But I loved that picture of him.

It meant so much to Chuck Berry.

And if it got me the guitar... (LAUGHTER) GEOFF BENNETT: Though the museum is now one of the most visited in Washington, Secretary Bunch has found himself defending what he built against a presidential administration determined to reshape how the Smithsonian tells the American story.

DONALD TRUMP, President of the United States: We want the museums to treat our country fairly.

We want the museums to talk about the history of our country in a fair manner, not in a woke manner or in a racist manner.

GEOFF BENNETT: In March of last year, President Trump signed an executive order called Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.

It accused the Smithsonian of promoting what the order called a "distorted narrative driven by ideology, rather than truth," singling out exhibits that examine race and slavery as examples of what it deemed improper ideology.

By August of 2025, the White House had sent Bunch's office a formal letter ordering a content review of Smithsonian Museums ahead of the nation's 250th anniversary.

And just last week, the administration threatened to withhold federal support.

President Trump has accused the institution of presenting American history through a distorted ideological lens.

What does he fundamentally misunderstand about the work the Smithsonian does?

LONNIE BUNCH: I think the Smithsonian, first and foremost, does what it's done for 180 years, use scholarship, use good public servants, use research to help America understand itself, to help America find hope and healing.

And I think that, because the Smithsonian tells a fuller, more complicated story, that makes it hard for some people to understand what we do.

But I think the most important thing to remember is that the Smithsonian is not a place driven by left-wing crazy people.

It's really a place driven by people who love a nation and who basically believe, like I do, that the great strength of a nation is that it's aspirational, and that, for me, Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence is so powerful because it challenges us to live up to certain ideals.

And what you see through history, what you see through African American history are people for hundreds of years protesting, demonstrating, voting, dying in order to make concrete those words.

And there's nothing more powerful, it seems to me, than a nation that aspires to - - for that more perfect union.

GEOFF BENNETT: Right, because there is this larger debate that telling the difficult parts of our history amounts to denigrating the country.

LONNIE BUNCH: Right.

GEOFF BENNETT: What do we lose as a country when we're only focused on telling the parts of our story that make us feel good?

LONNIE BUNCH: Well, we don't understand how we have arrived at where we have arrived.

It's almost like saying your doctor gave you a physical and you only want half of what he or she found out, right?

So, for me, my notion is, knowledge is power, and that if you understand the complexity of your nation, then you're doing better.

GEOFF BENNETT: How do you distinguish between legitimate scrutiny of a publicly funded institution and interference, bad faith interference?

LONNIE BUNCH: I mean, I'm not sure I can distinguish them both.

What I can distinguish is, I think the Smithsonian always wants to be better, wants to be a learning institution.

So, when anybody raises issues, be it president of the United States or another historian, I think we want to grapple with it.

We want to try to understand, is there ways that we can be better?

But I think what's important is, we have to have sort of scholarship as our North Star.

We have to recognize that the Smithsonian has served America through a whole variety of administrations and points of view, and we will continue to do that.

GEOFF BENNETT: Bunch said flatly that nothing in the museum has been altered as a result of the political pressure.

LONNIE BUNCH: I want to be really clear.

Anything that's changed, the Smithsonian changed it because of an artifact that needed to be removed for conservation issues.

We haven't changed anything from political pressure.

GEOFF BENNETT: Still, Bunch was candid about the weight of the moment.

LONNIE BUNCH: There's no doubt that this is a difficult time.

I really thought, at the end of my career, I'd have a little bit of coasting.

But you know what?

I think that all I want to do is protect the Smithsonian and make sure people understand the complexity of our experience and to really use history to help people find hope and understanding.

If that's bad, then I'm a bad guy.

GEOFF BENNETT: That fight over how history should be told is unfolding as the museum takes on one of its most ambitious projects since opening, In Slavery's Wake, an exhibition that expands the story beyond America to four continents.

Paul Gardullo is a museum curator and director of its Center for the Study of Global Slavery.

Why was it important to tell the history of slavery across continents, rather than specifically through the American frame?

PAUL GARDULLO, Center for the Study of Global Slavery Director: The story of the slave trade and wider slavery is a story of making the modern world.

We haven't really looked at the full global scope.

JOHANNA OBENDA, Curator, Center for the Study of Global Slavery: And we have learned so much, because this is a global history, and I think no one nation, no one institution can really approach it alone.

GEOFF BENNETT: Johanna Obenda is part of a younger generation of curators carrying the museum's mission forward.

She was the primary developer of the In Slavery's Wake exhibition.

JOHANNA OBENDA: I like to think of us all as sort of having a piece of this puzzle, and those pieces, they're very strong on their own, but when we bring them together, this fuller picture emerges.

And so, for example, the stories that we learned coming out of Senegal through the oral histories, through archaeological excavations, those are things that we had not come across in the written record.

GEOFF BENNETT: And in this moment where there's such intense political pressure over how race and slavery are depicted in institutions like this, how does that or does it at all shape the work that you do?

JOHANNA OBENDA: I feel really anchored, honestly, speaking about those who have come before us, like Secretary Bunch, and the sort of missions and the mantra of this museum, right, which is to tell the unvarnished truth.

GEOFF BENNETT: For Bunch, the obligation is straightforward.

You have spent your career building institutions designed to preserve history.

Did you ever imagine that, as Smithsonian secretary, you would also have to defend the very idea that museums should be free to tell a complicated history?

LONNIE BUNCH: First of all, I never thought I'd be secretary.

So... (LAUGHTER) LONNIE BUNCH: But I think that it's really important to say, Americans are an amazingly brave people.

They have fought wars.

They have overcome depression.

I want Americans not to be afraid of their own history, to basically recognize that, by telling the fullness -- and some of this is great stories of important leaders, and some of it is challenges we have to face, and some of it is challenges we have overcome.

I think that makes you better as a nation, as a people.

GEOFF BENNETT: More than a decade ago, the question was whether the museum would be built at all.

Today, it's whether it can keep telling the nation's story the way it was built to tell it.

For Bunch, after a career spent building institutions around the power of history, that work is now part of the legacy he leaves behind.

When you think about your legacy, how do you want people to characterize your contribution?

LONNIE BUNCH: My legacy is somebody else's decision, right?

But I think that the notion of the importance of history.

History has always shaped my life and my career, and I want people to understand what history is, which is not just nostalgia.

It is really this amazing reservoir that helps you find understanding.

It is this really important moment to be able to understand that we now accept that we're shaped by our ancestors' DNA.

We're also shaped by the history they experienced.

So I want people to find a useful and a usable history and to understand that history matters.